Consistency In Web Design

Consistency In Web Design

It is safe to say that ‘it pays to be consistent’ as far as website designing in India or almost any where is concerned. Consistancy is one of the chief factors that many businesses prefer a ready made template instead of getting a custom template built, event if it means that they have to sacrifice their own ideas and settle for what is available. The ready made templates are usually theme based and the same theme is followed consistently throughout the site. For example if it a business site theme you will notice that site has appropriate images, colour, fonts and layout which is maintained through the site. The web designer may find himself restricted by not allowing his creative juices to flow by designing each page of the site. And they are right where they stands since, that is the design perspective. However the site is being built from the usability perspective and that is why consistency matters. Besides it is human nature to search for a symmetry and common method of doing things for a given site and if they don’t find that they might not spend a great deal of time on the site.

Consistancy is required in all aspects of the India web design. To put it in more simpler terms the images on the site need to have the same mood, the sounds too need to match the theme. If there are highlighted regions on the page they too need to be have some sense of a theme as if they belong to the same site. Businesss often get their sites made just so that have an online presence. Such sites usually consist of a home page with the basic introduction, an about us page with history on the company, a services page listing their services provided and a contact us page to let the users know their contact information. Such sites which have only 4-5 pages tend to have different theme on each page since it is the content that is given more importance. There is another true saying and that is ‘Content is King’ but first impression counts as well. If the content is presented only with the intent of it being published to be viewed and not accompanied with appropriate graphics and consistent design you will find that lesser visitors return to the site and even lesser of those visits are meaning full.

The good thing of having to be consistent with designing a website is that it also provides a sense of direction to the website designer. Since once the theme of the site is selected they can blindly select the necessary images, graphics and design elements according to the selected theme. This can be quite easily implemented in simple websites by having a consistant header and footer. This in fact makes life easier for the web designers.

Summary:

Consistancy is the key to good web design, since it is second nature to look for some form of theme or pattern which is true for websites as well. It is also true that website content is king and importance needs to be given to the content. Thus both need to work in tandem, the content is required to be delivered from a more user perspective rather than technical such that users find it easy to navigate through out the site and get the overall feeling of being on the meaning full web site instead of just visiting pages of content.

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